High-speed digital communication networks over copper and optical fiber are used in many network communication and digital storage applications. Ethernet and Fiber Channel are two widely used communication protocols, which continue to evolve in response to increasing demands for higher bandwidth in digital communication systems.
The Ethernet protocol may provide collision detection and carrier sensing in the physical layer. The physical layer, layer 1, is responsible for handling all electrical, optical, opto-electrical and mechanical requirements for interfacing to the communication media. Notably, the physical layer may facilitate the transfer of electrical signals representing an information bitstream. The physical layer (PHY) may also provide services such as, encoding, decoding, synchronization, clock data recovery, and transmission and reception of bit streams.
As the demand for higher data rates and bandwidth continues to increase, equipment vendors are continuously being forced to employ new design techniques for manufacturing network equipment capable of handling these increased data rates. In response to this demand, the physical layer, or PHY, has been designed to operate at gigabit speeds to keep pace with this demand for higher data rates. These gigabit PHYs are now becoming quite popular in home and office use.
Gigabit Ethernet, which initially found application in gigabit servers, is becoming widespread in personal computers, laptops, and switches, thereby providing the necessary infrastructure for handling data traffic of PCs and packetized telephones. However, network switches, which may be located in a central location within an office, run multiple cable mediums for network and voice data from the switch location to individual office locations, for example. In this regard, multiple cable mediums are now utilized to carry voice and network data. In the alternative, a single cable medium for voice and network data may run from the network switch to individual office locations. However, this scenario is costly as each office location will require a separate switch to route voice data to a telephone and network data to a PC.
Furthermore, existing 10/100Base Ethernet IP telephones place a bottleneck on the gigabit path between gigabit Ethernet enabled PCs and gigabit Ethernet wiring switches, since the Ethernet IP telephone is not adapted to process data utilizing gigabit speeds. Data may be communicated in gigabit speeds from a gigabit Ethernet switch to the Ethernet IP telephone, but the Ethernet IP telephone may only handle data at speeds lower than one gigabit. In this regard, existing telephones may only process gigabit Ethernet data speeds with an external gigabit Ethernet transceiver which increases connection complexity.
In certain applications, factors such as network traffic prioritization and secure handling of information may play a significant role in the design of a gigabit Ethernet IP telephone and components integrated therein. For example, a gigabit Ethernet IP telephone may be adapted to receive multiple types of data, which may have to be prioritized for efficient processing. Some gigabit Ethernet IP telephones handle voice data, and users expect voice quality on par with that of circuit switched plain old telephone service (POTS) telephones. This places certain demands and constraints on the handling of voice data with regard to latency. Furthermore, some network data may have to be communicated and processed in a secure manner within the gigabit Ethernet IP telephone.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.